Quotes About Silence

The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-It on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it.

What you don't write is often more important than what you do

Memory is like glass. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.

Arrebatada, repentina, inevitable, la felicidad cruza dejándonos el silencio como hacen los ángeles y las luciérnagas, igual que un colibrí o las hadas.

What we're in is a vacuum.

There is a silence in empty houses that is unique... People have left and taken all the noise with them.

I'm too old for talks. I gave that up when I turned sixty. I'd done enough talking in my life by then. Nowadays I neither speak nor listen to what anybody else has to say.

Martinsson was at the other side of the table, watching him. 'He knows exactly what's going on inside my head at the moment,' Wallander thought, 'and he agrees with me, whether I speak up now or hold my tongue.

First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.

Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed.

The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, nonhearing life to a life of listening.

The question that must guide all organizing activity in a parish is not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.

When we are alone with God, the Spirit prays in us. The challenge is to develop a simple discipline or spiritual practice to embrace some empty time and empty space every day.

But our task is the opposite of distraction. Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God's active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide all organizing activity in a parish is not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.

The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God.

Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.

If I have learned anything this week, it is that there is a contemplative way of working that is more important for me than praying, reading, or singing. Most people think that you go to the monastery to pray. Well, I prayed more this week than before but also discovered that I have not learned yet to make the work of my hands into a prayer.

The core of all prayer is indeed listening, obediently standing in the presence of God.

silence remains indispensable today as it was in the past. The Word of God is born out of the eternal silence of God, and it is to this Word out of silence that we want to be witnesses.

Without reading the word, silence becomes stale, and without silence, the word loses its re-creative power. The word leads to silence and silence to the word. The word is born in silence, and silence is the deepest response to the word.

As ministers our greatest temptation is toward too many words. They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit.

Advent . . . leads to a growing inner stillness and joy allowing me to realize that the One for whom I am waiting has already arrived and speaks to me in the silence of my heart.

The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them.

When one thinks what one leaves in the world when one dies, Only silence is strong, - all the rest is but lies.